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Updated: July 10, 2025
About this time Frau Elsbeth began to age rapidly. Long, deep furrows lined her face, her chin became very prominent, and silver streaks appeared in her hair. Only from the depths of her sorrowful eyes one could still see how beautiful she had once been.
She had the Bible lying on her knee, and was learning the verses they had been given as their task. There were not many children there, and when he sat down opposite to her she made a half movement as if she meant to get up and come over to him; but she sat down again immediately and went on learning. His mother had told him before he left just to address Elsbeth.
Elsbeth did as he advised and remained at home until the bells in Kandergrund rang for the service. Then she went to accompany her husband to his resting place. Sad and hard days came for Elsbeth. She missed her good, kind husband everywhere, and felt quite lost without him. Besides, cares came now which she had known little about before, for her husband had had his good, daily work.
The midday sun glittered on the open heath, and in misty distance the carriage rolled before him; it grew smaller and smaller, and at last disappeared as a black spot in the fir-wood. When he arrived home his mother kissed him on both cheeks, and asked, "Well, was it nice?" "Quite nice," he answered, "and, mamma, Elsbeth from the White House was there, too."
"Oh, I am still such a young wife," answered her visitor, blushing. "Scarcely six months married. But " and she blushed still more. "God be with you in your time of trouble," said Frau Elsbeth; "I will pray for you." The stranger's eyes grew moist. "Thanks, a thousand thanks," she said. "And let us be friends, I entreat you, with all my heart. Shall I propose something?
They ran and woke their parents with the tale, and all the house was searched in a wonderment, and disbelief, and hope, and tumult! But nothing was found. For nights they watched. But there was only the silent house. Only the empty rooms. They told the boys they must have been mistaken. But the boys shook their heads. "We know our Elsbeth," said they.
"My mother has charged me I am to ask you how your mother is?" He answered that she was well. "And she sends her many kind regards," continued Elsbeth. "And my mother also sends many kind regards to yours," he answered, turning the Bible and hymn-book between his fingers, "and I was to ask you, too, how she is?"
So she had ceased to suffer: the pale, kind woman who had watched over the Haidehof like a good angel, and whom his heart had clung to all his life. Now that she was dead the way was free to ruin and crime. And Elsbeth?
Elsbeth accepted the invitation and immediately began to tell the wood-carver why she had come and what she so much desired of him. Meanwhile Toni stood as if rooted to the floor and stared motionless at a single spot. In front of him next the wall was a glass case, in which could be seen two high rocks, carved out of wood. On one was standing a chamois with her little ones.
This work, too, is the most precious of all that have come down to us of Holbein's imaginative compositions, from the fact that his first-born, Philip, who was born about 1522, was the model for the Child, and that a portrait of Elsbeth, his wife, served as a study for the Virgin.
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